[TheForge] RE: [TheForge Safety note

[Ron Childers]

Andy, Interesting; many years ago I taught a younger friend how to make
gunpowder. He had it in a glass jar and was breaking up the lumps - Boom! It
blew up and burned his hand really bad. Never leave anything flammable
around a forge or anvil or where grinder sparks can reach it - WD-40, paint,
stain, stump rot, ammonium nitrate etc. Never store brake fluid on the shelf
above a bucket of HTH or aluminum powder near lye. Don't put gunpowder in
the same box with the primers. Same for dynamite and blasting caps. Don't
crimp the cap on the fuse with your teeth and never disconnect the ends of
the wires on electric caps until you unfold the wires and you are out of
harm's way. Static electricity can set 'em off. Like handling weapons:
Mostly common sense....

Ron C


	At 14 I was into napalm.  I even made it... I gelled up gaoline
	with styrofoam, finely divided magnesium, finely divided aluminum,
	even experimented with adding aluminum hydroxide, a component of
	"commercial" napalm.  Then I'd go blow things up.  Got learned real
	good when a glob made its way to my right palm and burned a hole
	maybe 1/16" deep.  I couldn't get it off.  It just stuck and burned
	and burned and it was mind bendingly painful... and that was a
	glob maybe 3/8" across, if that.  It gave me an appreciation for
	the horrible thing it must have been to be burned by it during
	the war.

	But it didn't dissuade me from fire, obviously. :)